Sunday, October 30, 2005

Blocking

It's been a weird couple of days for fancy dress. Friday morning it started raining on the way to the station and by the time the train had been delayed for 10 minutes everyone on the platform had taken on that defeated drowned-rat look. At Cambridge, grim-faced end-of-the-week commuters were met in the entrance hall by poor unfortunates who'd decided to dress up in big furry animal suits to collect for a children's charity. I think they realised they were on a hiding to nothing as we all charged snarling through the ticket hall, dripping with rain and lacking any benevolence whatever...

Last night there was a fancy dress party somewhere nearby. On the way over the Green to the village shop, I met a man clad in boxer shorts and an apron, wielding a cardboard meat cleaver; Jin at the shop had spotted two Morticias, a Frankenstein's Monster and a guy dressed as a huge pumpkin who'd had to stand outside and shout his order in through the door... it had all calmed down again by about 3am...

OK: knitting. Thought I'd block the couple of scarves I finished this month, both Christmas presents although I'm not sure who they're for...

Here they are pinned out on the bed (on manky blocking-sheet):

On the left, Branching Out; and on the right a Traveling Vines scarf, made longer than the original pattern suggested. I've gone on about the yarn for Branching Out elsewhere; Trailing Vines is Patons 3-ply Baby Wool, which I dyed turquoise originally, and then overdyed in purple. It makes a good laceweight if you live in a relative yarn desert and own some dye...

Stitch detail of the Traveling Vines:

And a close-up of a Favourite Thing, a Clover forked blocking pin.

I have two dozen of these babies, and if anyone who might read this has any influence with Clover Europe, we need to start a lobby to persuade them to make the pins available this side of the pond along with all their other lovely stuff... they're just so much easier to work with than any other type of pin...

The audience for this process was quite keen and alert to start with, but as the several-hundredth pin went in they lost interest somewhat.

Nope, that's my Jaeger Iona jumper - think it's a 4 by 3 rib, from either the first or the second Jaeger design book; Iona was already being discontinued when I bought it cheap and wish I'd bought more.